


Polybolos

by Silvermoonphantom (Daitoshi)



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Comic, Gen, Multiverse, Trapped in another world, Work In Progress, hiro is a giant nerd
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-26 03:09:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2635772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daitoshi/pseuds/Silvermoonphantom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Comic+Story<br/>Jumping headfirst into a collapsing portal is rarely a good idea, but it seemed to work out. (At first)<br/>Or, Hiro and Baymax find themselves in a mirror world, and getting home is a bit harder than either of them would prefer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Goodnight and Good Morning

Entering the portal was probably one of the strangest moments of his life. 

There was a moment when sound muted around him, an electrified pressure damping down around him. Every hair that wasn't pressed down by his helmet and suit immediately stood on end. All at once, sound returned, along with a supersaturated world that honestly blew his mind. 

The vibrancy of the color was uncomfortable, like neon, highlighter-bright colored paper that only the most enthusiastic of middle-schoolers enjoyed. Clouds made of shifting, clashing colors faintly glowed from their own light, illuminated brighter from the white-blue crackle of the open portal behind him. 

Sound came back to him in a quiet stutter, crunching and smashing of metal and glass overlaid by the hum of Baymax's propulsion and a teeth-grinding whine that tickled on the edge of his perceptions. 

"Careful, there's debres everywhere."

He reminded Baymax, leaning to help the robot to bank out of the way. It didn't seem to help, and Hiro noticed the robot moving a bit differently. There didn't appear to be wind resistance, or gravity - though the latter might have been obvious by the floating bits of building spinning around his head. 

His heart stuttered when he realized a long panel of windows was approaching, set on cutting his torso off. Hiro detached from the magnet pads, stumbling as he sprinted along the glass. 

He could see the red armor of his robot through the surfaces, and an opening that he could jump down through.

He put on an extra burst of speed, just as something caught his attention from the corner of his eye.

Another metal panel, some sort of support for the sweeping curves of the building, was headed on a collision course with him.

With too little time to make it through the gap, Hiro leapt upward instead, barely missing the crackle of glass shattering under his feet. The lack of gravity sent him further than anticipated, but he tried to remain calm as Baymax flared his thrusters to turn around and retrieve him.

Still, there was nothing left to do but drift upward, propelled by his own momentum. 

“That was a close…”

A crackle of sound and a strange staticky feeling ran across his shoulders.

“..call?”

Hiro twisted around, and wished that he hadn’t.

One of the candy-colored clouds had shifted toward him, pale lightning arching between the glowing threads of something otherworldly.

Hiro turned back towards the red-armored robot, reaching his arm out.

“Baymax!”

He cried out, as the pink and blue mist billowed up to swallow him in. Light faded quickly, and he could feel dizziness clamping down around his head, and stirring up his stomach into an unhappy twist.

“Help…”

He could no longer see anything, and the nausea intensified until he couldn’t take it anymore.

He blacked out.

 

 

Awareness crept up on him slowly, darkness blanketing him in a warm embrace.

Where was he?

"Hiro."

He could vaguely hear his voice being called, from a vast distance away. Head pounding, he shifted to grab it. Cloth was under him, a familiar smell reaching him as well. Where had his helmet gone?

The last thing he remembered, was the space beyond the portal - strange gravity, neon storms and snapping lightning. 

"Hiro?"

His knees curled up slightly, shoulders hunching. He knew that voice, tickling on the edge of his hearing when his brain was half asleep. 

With a deep breath, he cracked an eye open, stomach already dropping at the sight of familiar posters. He was in his room - somehow, he had made it out of the portal. That voice must have been part of a dream - it always was. 

It was probably Aunt Cass calling him down for breakfast, or his friends trying to get him to go to class, from a message on his computer. His eyes drifted down - as alarming as it was to wake up with no recollection of getting back to his room, the initial internal diagnosis of 'Concussion - need sleep to heal brain' was enough to put him back down. 

"Hiro, wake up." 

A jolt shot through him, terrifying and painfully hopeful. He whipped his head around, eyes darting to the source of the noise. 

_He_ was standing at the top of the staircase, acting all the world like it was a normal thing. 

"Good Morning, sleepyhead."

That was definitely not a voice in his head! 

"Better get dressed, it's your big day!"

Like a crescendo, the name clambered through his chest and swallowing up his brain.

**T  A  D  A  S  H  I**

****

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Note: As of 11/24, I edited a fair bit of the story, to actually be a story and not just a summary of events to reference while making the comic.   
> Third chapter coming soon


	2. Reality

  
"What, no 'Good Morning' to your big brother? After all that work I did?"

Tadashi smoothed back his dark hair, nestling his cap into place.

Hiro lay motionless, eyes tracking the young man's progress through the room. The colors were bright, and he didn't feel disconnected from reality. 

There was no way... 

Hiro slid off the bed, heart racing. What if it was an hallucination brought on by a head wound? What if he had dreamed the last nine months? ( _but it had felt so real_ )

His hands trembled as he reached out for his brother - still half convinced it was a mirage or a dream, and would vanish into smoke at any moment.

Tadashi turned to him, the good-natured smile falling away into concern. 

“Hey, are you okay?”

Fingertips met warm fabric, and curled into it.

 

 

He was real.  
Oh god, he was real.  
Hiro bowed his head, pressing his forehead into his brother's ribs. He could feel the startled inhale, muscles and bones moving just as they were supposed to.

Was it all really a dream? All of that inventing and time with his friends, the murderous rage when he found out what Callahan had done... He could recall most of it still, but the doubt had already cast a dreamlike quality on it all. 

"Hiro?"

  
He felt a warm hand lay down over the back of his head, thumb ruffling the perpetually messy hair.  
Tears seemed to well up out of their own accord, throat tightening like an archer's string.

Whatever had happened, this was reality. It couldn't be a dream. He could count the stitches in Tadashi's clothes, smell  _home_ and the faint aroma of spiced meat from downstairs. There were too many details for it to be a hallucination. 

  
"You-." He paused, swallowing to try and level out his voice. His brother's name, his smell, the warmth of him was thundering through Hiro's brain, quickly eating up every other thought.   
"You're real, right?"

  
An arm pulled him closer, until he could wrap his arms around Tadashi's waist and cling like a limpet. Hot tears were sliding down his face, jaw hurting from how hard he was clenching it.

  
"Oh, Hiro, Of course I'm real."

Those words echoed through his skull, and he couldn't help but holding his brother tighter. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Note: As of 11/24, I edited a fair bit of the story, to actually be a story and not just a summary of events to reference while making the comic.   
> Third chapter coming soon


	3. Chapter 3

He held on a little longer, calming the frantic whirring of his mind that was screaming ‘this isn’t possible!’

He stepped back, looking up at his brother.

Tadashi crouched down, tilting his head see to into Hiro’s eyes.

“You okay?”

He nodded, wiping away his tears with the back of his hands

“Yeah, I just… I had a nightmare.”

“As long as you’re fine….”

His expression shifted into faint displeasure.

“...what time did you get back last night?”

Hiro blinked at him.

“Uh… late?” _(I think?)_

“I stayed up until 3am waiting for you. You said you’d be with your friends, but I couldn’t get ahold of them.”

The young genius remained silent - having absolutely no idea what his brother was talking about.

“Not to mention, you were wearing a ridiculous outfit this morning.” He gestured to the closet.

Sure enough, his purple armor was laying haphazardly stacked, the helmet atop his desk.

His heart stuttered in his chest.

“W-what?”

The displeasure shifted to worry.

“Have you been drinking?”

Hiro whipped around to face him.

“What? No!”

“Or taking drugs - this is really serious, Hiro, don’t lie to me.”

He took a breath, looking Tadashi in the eye. (Oh god you’re really alive, and right here, I’ll never let you out of my sight again)

“I’ve never taken drugs in my life.” He tilted his head “Well, drugs that hadn’t been prescribed to me.”

Brown eyes flicked back and forth between his own darker ones, finally closing with Tadashi’s sigh.

“I wish you’d talk to me.”

“I am talking to you!” He gestured between the two of them, opening his palms questioningly. “This, right here, this is talking, right? The two of us?”

His brother raised his hand and rubbed his own face, looking away.

“Forget about it.”

He walked toward the stairs, turning to speak over his shoulder.

“The bus arrives in half an hour. We’ll talk about your...cosplay, later.”

As Tadashi’s head bobbed down out of sight, Hiro gave into the screaming urge and lunged to watch him for a few moments from the top of the stairs, as he left via the steps.

Tadashi was alive.

Holy shit.

Scolding him and everything.

Hiro flopped back onto his bed, accepting the bounce and staring wide-eyed at the ceiling.

Tadashi was back, but...everything was weird.

Bus? School? He hadn’t ridden a schoolbus since he graduated Highschool at 13.

He glanced at the wall, blinking uncomprehendingly for a moment. It was blank.

There wasn’t a GED certificate there, or his black cap.

He pushed himself upright, sliding off the bed again to survey the room closely.

Tadashi’s side was still pretty tidy, but lacked...something. Less books, maybe?

Hiro’s desk was definitely different, now that he was looking for it.

Gone were the bits and bobs of wire and circuitry - his toolbox had been replaced by a stack of books. (Why was it in English?) His monitor was a different brand and size - a quick check of the computer tower nearly gave him a heart attack.

It was old.

Like, outdated for at least twenty years kind of old.

A quick tap on his keyboard and he frowned at it. Why were they sticky?

His password on the computer was not the same (nor did it match any of the other five passwords *or three variations in capitalization of each* he normally used.)  

This was already in the Twilight Zone of weirdness.

He turned and knelt down to pick up his armor, turning a chest plate over in his hand.

It was still scratched from the microbot battle, the purple lacquer gleaming over reinforced carbon fiber.

Hiro frowned.

So it hadn't been a dream.

Somehow, he had ended up here, in his bedroom, with both his brother and his armor.  

_(his brother was alive!!!!)_

A quiet tapping caught his attention - something from the window over his desk.

He pulled up the shade and yelped, stumbling back.

Hiro looked up again and burst out in nervous giggles, a grin splitting across his face and chasing a fair few of his worries away.

“Baymax, what are you doing?”

“I have been trying to find you - My batteries are getting low, and my charging station is still at your home.”

Hiro scratched his head.

“Well, fly down to the basement, I guess. I’ll figure out where Tadashi hid it.” _(god it felt good to refer to him like that)_

“My charger is not in this house’s basement - it is back in San Fransokyo. Your awareness seems compromised. Scanning now.”

“This is my house, Baymax. We’re in San Fransokyo. Things are just a bit weird.”

“Scan complete. You have a slight concussion-”

“Called it!”

“-and your Endorphin, Oxytocin and Seratonin levels are elevated, suggesting overall happiness. I do not find any sign of injury or illness.”

“See, I’m fine. Go down and charge yourself.”

“However, Hiro, we are not in San Fransokyo.”

The brunette signed, collapsing into the desk chair, looking up at Baymax’s face through the window.

“Oh? Enlighten me, oh great one.” He waved his arm grandly. “Where in the world are we?”

Baymax paused, blinking once.

“A consultation of the internet confirms what my scanners read - we are in San Francisco, of the United States of America.”

He squinted his eyes at the robot.

“You sure you’re reading that correctly?”

“I’m positive. We are not in ‘The world’ as you referred to.”

 

Hiro stared at the white face for a moment, just breathing and mulling it over. The armor clattered to the floor as he stood suddenly, squeezing into Tadashi’s side of the room and pulling aside the blinds.

The sight of the city pulled his breath away.

Gone was the Asian flair from the colonizing Japan, differences and similarities clashing painfully with his memory of his long-time home. The curved roofs were gone, streets a bit wider and... he squinted, tilting his head. The roads weren't as steep. That hill that ate up trolley brakes was a gentle slope, not a thigh-burning deathtrap. 

Baymax was still hovering outside his little window - probably wasting battery. 

“Baymax…” he murmured, letting the curtain fall shut. “...why is everything written in Romanji?”

“It is not Romanji, but English. This country’s de facto language is English, followed by Spanish.”

Hiro found himself sinking to the floor. So that's why everything looked Eastern. 

“Oh man... Um, how many people speak Japanese?“

“Approximately 445,000 people are native Japanese speakers - .001 percent of the current population.”

He grabbed at his hair, pulling it anxiously.

“I am in so much trouble.”

“Do you need assistance?”

His first reaction was to snap ‘no!’ at the bot, but caught himself with a deep, shuddering breath.

“Um, do you know how to translate English to Japanese?”

“Although some meaning may be lost, I can translate.”

“Awesome. Could you go into the garage? I’ll meet you down there in few minutes.”

Baymax nodded, and sank downward until he was out of sight.

 

Something on the opposite wall caught his eye.

An acceptance letter, framed and mounted.

For Tadashi Hamada, into the Robotics program at some school name he didn’t recognize.

Even just reading that - converting it in his mind from his native language to one he had only studied for a year back in Highschool… it was slow, and annoying.

He exhaled explosively, clasping his hands together and placing a knuckle against his lips.

“Well, shit.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick Headcanon History Lesson!
> 
> In Hiro's World:  
> Early in the colonial settlement of America, the Japanese isolationism had a hiccup, and they opened up their borders early, resulting in a lot of Japanese citizens to look Eastward for more lands. They settled a bit on Hawaii, creating a large naval base on the islands, then expanding their reach to California.  
> While English, Spanish and French movements were pushing westward, Japan suddenly had way more land than they knew what to do with. - A lot of immigration happened, and Japan set roots down in the California area.  
> They claimed a good chunk of the coast - extending up into what would now be British Columbia, down into Mexico, and as using the mountains as a barrier to drive away English/American Colonial settlers. (I like to think they were a bit kinder to the indigenous people, but this is all headcanon anyway)
> 
> In modern times (In Hiro's world) there is a lot of casual border-crossing between the United States of America (only 35 states, not 50), and what ended up being known as "Japan's Greater State"  
> Japan had also maintained its hold on Korea, absorbing it as another state.  
> (Japan owns a loooooot of ocean)
> 
> Hiro and Tadashi's native language is Japanese, and while Hiro took some English lessons while in Highschool, he was a bit more preoccupied with Robotics and trying to graduate early, so he's forgotten most of the finer details.
> 
> If you want more information about Hiro's city, as a BH6 fan, this article is definitely worth checking out.   
> http://gizmodo.com/a-tour-of-san-fransokyo-the-hybrid-city-disney-built-f-1642066794


	4. Chapter 4

 

Climbing out a window was a bit harder than he remembered. This house hadn’t recently replaced the shingles, so that may be part of the problem. Either way, sliding down toward the edge of a roof toward a two-story drop wasn’t his idea of a good time.

He heard the ring of the trolley behind him, hoisting himself up and glancing at it out of habit.

Hiro did a double-take.

He scrambled along the roof that wound around his house, ducking into the shadows and peeking out at the street.

Sure enough, it was still there, walking as calm as could be. 

Himself.

Well, some alternate world version of himself, with longer hair and a bored look on his face as he strolled up to the store while talking on the phone.

And yes, it was incredibly disconcerting to hear his own voice talk in a language he could barely understand.

“Hey, Hiro. Ready for school?”

The other Hiro switched back into Japanese.

“Yeah, yeah.”

With Tadashi’s greeting, a dark, sucking feeling started climbing into his stomach.

His brother already had a sibling.

“What, you’re not going to nag me about staying out late again?”

For a brief moment, Hiro seriously considered the merits of tying his double up in the garage, and assuming his life. Just the tone he had used ground on Hiro’s nerves.

How dare he talk to Tadashi like that! He should appreciate what he had!

His brother sighed from beneath the awning.

“Figure you’ve had enough of that for the morning. C’mon, Aunt Cass made breakfast.”

The two entered the house again, and Hiro scrubbed at his face with his hands, steadfastly ignoring the angry tears pricking the corners of his eyes and the betrayed feeling that this world was being rubbed in his face

He took a shuddering breath, clambering down from the roof and slipping into the garage from the back entrance.

 

* * *

 

 

Baymax turned to greet him as he entered, doing that cute little arm-circle wave.

Hiro forced a small smile, leaning forward to press his forehead gently against the cool armor.

What would be the consequences, of taking over that brat’s life? Probably too many - He hadn’t stuck around to make any highschool friends, and there was the whole ‘not actually being bilingual’ thing to worry about. In all likelyhood, everyone would know instantly. 

Tch.

Back to plan A: Getting back home.  

Huge arms encircled him in a hug, and Hiro tried to calm his flustered heart with the sound of quiet whirring motors from inside the robot.

Tadashi is _here._

“Thanks, buddy.”

He pulled away, patting one red arm. He reached up, tracing the deep scars left by fighting microbots; metal and carbonfiber gleaming at the edges. There was no fixing that now - not until he got back home.

Hiro wandered around, scanning the contents and compiling a list in his head, of what he needed to charge the bot's battery. Thankfully, Baymax hadn’t gotten to his ‘drunk’ stage of power loss quite yet.

 

In hindsight, it was hilarious - After certain non-critical functions were shut off, the lack of steady power hampered his ability to balance upright, and the visual sensors became far slower in identifying objects and matching them to a correct response.

Honestly, he wasn’t sure about the slurred and stuttering speech. That spoke more of a deep-lying glitch than an actual system process.

“Baymax, sit down over there.”

He waved his hand toward a mostly-empty corner, pulling a tangle of extension cords out from their pile. One end was plugged into the socket already, so he hauled them toward the giant red figure slumping against the wall.

There was hardly any good tech in here - he’d be surprised to find a working touch-screen, let alone magnetic servos, hyperspectral cameras or a good biometric scanner.

“Alright, hold still.”

Hiro wiggled his fingers between the joints in the armor, releasing the tiny trigger that detached the foot/shin region from the knee. It popped off with a click,and he pulled it down to reveal a puffy white foot.

He repeated the process with the other one, tracing this thumb around to find the nearly-invisible button. Ah!

Baymax’s hard foot detached at the ankle, a wave of stale air flooding out as the leg deflated. Hiro wiggled it off his skeleton, peering at the copper-colored pads that served to attach to his charging station. (they were probably actually copper, to be honest) Examining the inside of the foot, there seemed to be an opening that slid open to allow metal-to-metal contact when Baymax charged.

With a few days, his own lab and all of Tadashi’s notes, he could probably remake the portable charging station.

With all this junk?  

Ugh.

Alright, main components.

Hiro threw himself into the project, time passing faster than he was really aware. Soon enough, hunger let him know that a few hours, at least, had gone by. (He did discover the garage had a mini fridge and an incredibly dusty microwave - the latter of which was promptly taken apart after he finished using it)

Dining on vaguely recognizable cola and canned vegetables was about as fun as he remembered. Luckily, poking around at Tadashi’s custom-designed actuators was way more fun than he anticipated. Nickel-Titanium Shape-Memory alloys!

Ah, he couldn’t wait to get back so he could exploit that nerd school for every bit of tech and equipment they had…..and replace Baymax’s Lithium-Ion battery with a proper ultracapacitor.

Baymax’s enhanced scanner also helped a lot, playing a weird version of ‘Where’s Waldo’ with the tools and supplies required.

Finally, Hiro had connected enough resistors and frayed enough wires to feel safe approaching Baymax with the cobbled-together chargers. He winced as a spark jumped, but grinned in victory as the quiet voice announced: “Charging”

“Sick!”

Hiro flopped back onto his back, stretching his hands and wrists.

“Any clue on when you’ll be fully charged?”

“At the current rate, two hours.”

Hiro shrugged. That wasn’t half bad, considering the size of the batteries and the supplies he had to work with. He’d much rather go at a slow trickle charge than overheat/melt things by going to fast.

 

That just left planning, information gathering, supply gathering and what else? Oh yeah - figuring out how to make or find a portal that can transport people to other dimensions in a world that was SO behind in technology development it was actually sad.

 

An explosive exhale actually stirred the cobwebs up at the ceiling.

To the internet!

 

* * *

 

 

Hiro Hamada was a pretty chill guy, if you asked him.

He liked Math, disliked History and didn’t really like or dislike school in general. He had some friends, and quite a few teachers who were disappointed to find out he was not a miniature golden-child Tadashi.

Nah, He’d rather coast through school, and use his time after school to hang out with his friends, play video games, and nag each other about the latest mod they found, tweaked, or made up.

When asked ‘what are you going to do with your life’, he’d always think _(I’m 14 - why would I know that?)_ and respond something like “Computer programmer, probably.”

Game programming was fun, but it wasn’t something he’d want to do as a job. It entertained him, but didn’t make his heart soar, or interest peak up as soon as the topic was introduced.

More often than not, it irritated him to have Tadashi or Aunt Cass bring it up - knowing they’d soon ask him what he learned about it recently, or if he had taken extra time to study or practice those skills.

Annoyed shrugs apparently weren’t proper answers.

Still, his day had started out pretty good. Even after he had stayed out all night and (knowingly) neglected to call the house to inform them, his brother didn’t harp on him about it.

Breakfast was already made, and his bed was still unmade.

Seriously, it was freaky when he came home and his bed was made - basically rubbing in his face that someone had been poking around and ‘cleaning’.

Ten minutes left to get to the bus, he quickly logged into his computer and printed out the assignments - It was just algebra, he’d do it on the bus.

His project went surprisingly well. The jerk who he'd been partner with actually pulled through, doing his half of the paper and providing a few extra pictures to glue to their poster board before class started. 

Getting home from school was also good. Tadashi had gone back to his nerd school that morning, after visiting for his Spring Break. Hiro had the upper room to himself again.

Screen wall closed, blinds drawn an- ….what?

He peered into his closet, quirking an eyebrow at the purple-blue armor laying in a pile.

Was this some sort of mistimed birthday gift?

He picked up the helmet, turning it around in his hands.

It was pretty cool, at least - reminiscent of a couple futuristic FPS games.

He pressed a button, and the clear visor swept up seamlessly into the top.

Holy crap, that was awesome!

He flicked on the lamp beside his desk, kicking back in his office chair and examining it closer.

The ‘ears’ had orange tips, and similarly colored twin stripes contrasted cheerfully against the indigo base. He flipped it over, pushing long bangs out of the way and sliding it onto his head.

A perfect fit.

He blinked, looking around and testing the weight of it.

Man, a seriously perfect fit - like it was moulded to his head. This was crazy! If this was an early birthday gift, he owed Tadashi a lot of apologies for being a shithead recently.

Suddenly, a gentle voice crackled in his ear.

“Charging”

He squeaked, ripping the helmet off and flinging it away. It bounced off the side of his bed, rolling back toward him a bit.

The voice spoke again, something muffled that he couldn’t hear from this distance. He prodded at the helmet with his sock-clad toe, jerking back and expecting the worse.

Nothing happened.

He slid out of his chair, crouching down and gingerly picking the helmet back up again.

He turned it around, holding it up to the light and squinting at the interior. Sure enough, there was a small series of holes around the ear area, presumably where little speakers would be. The horn-ear things made more sense now- they were probably antenna to pick up bluetooth or radio or something.

Oh man, this was way cool. Who was on the other end?

He slid the helmet on again, wrinkled his nose, removed it to adjust his hair and put it back on.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

A short pause, then the gentle voice responded.

“Hello, who is this?”

Hiro grinned, biting his lip and trying not to freak out vocally. He eyed the chest plate and gloves, practically bouncing in his seat. What gadgets did THOSE hide?

“This is Hiro Hamada - who are you?”

The pause was much longer this time, and he wondered if the line had disconnected.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Baymax looked over at Hiro, who was currently popping open another soda and sucking the foam off. They made eye-contact, and Hiro quirked his eyebrow in something Baymax could distinguish as curiosity. 

  
“Uh oh.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The whole ”What kind of battery does it use?” “Lithium Ion.” “You know a super-capacitor would charge faster” exchange is Hiro being a little shit and talking out his ass. Lithium Ion Batteries ARE super-capacitors. Probably why Tadashi hummed in acknowledgement, but didn’t agree. Too nice to call him out, maybe.


	5. Help Me Help You

 

When informed that his helmet was being worn by someone else, Hiro nearly choked on his soda. When the news was followed up by who exactly was wearing the helmet, he nearly had a heart attack.

“What do you mean alternate-me is on the line?”

Baymax didn’t react to the hissed words, and obligingly tilted his head as Hiro reached up to remove the red helmet.

He cleared his throat, looking around through the faintly tinted visor. From the other side, a familiar voice spoke up.

“Hello? You still there?”

It was super weird.

Like, he had heard himself in videos, and over a microphone, but it was still an uncomfortable sensation to hear himself say words that he KNEW he had never spoken.

The voice switched into English.

“Can you still hear me?”

“I can hear you just fine.” Hiro replied in his native tongue. “Baymax was handing over the receiver.”

He could hear the curiosity, despite radio silence.

“Oh? Was Baymax who answered? Who’re you?”

Hiro looked at the half-armored Bot, giving an exaggerated ‘help me!’ expression. The white and black face only blinked at him, tilting the ovular head. Still not sure what he was going to do in this foreign place, he decided to give honesty a shot.

After all, if he couldn’t trust himself, who could he trust?

“Baymax is a robot. I wasn’t expecting a call.”

He heard a shuffle from the environment, something that shouldn’t be possible through the installed microphone. He’d have to adjust the focus, later.

“I, uh, found a helmet in my room. It’s freaking awesome. Thought it might be a gift?”

The voice was hopeful, and Hiro started pacing, one hand keeping the too-large helmet balanced enough to listen and speak, while the other unlatched the back door.

 

“Thanks for the compliment, but it wasn’t meant to be a gift - I made it myself, and had to take it off for a bit.”

He heard a low whistle, and some scraping.

“You made this? How rich are you?”

Suddenly imagining himself chilling in Fred’s mansion, Hiro huffed a laugh. He leaned forward, peeking out around the corner to see if anyone was watching.

No? Good.

“Not rich. I had the materials on hand.”

“Still, that’s some crazy skills you’ve got, there. Oh! You said you had to take it off… are you friend of Tadashi’s? Hanging around in the cafe? Hold on, I’ll come downstairs.”

Hiro tensed at the thought of other-him leaving the room with the helmet. He didn’t want too many people knowing about his arrival.

“Not in the cafe!” He cleared his throat again, leveling his voice. I’m in your garage, actually. Fixing something…” If he could leave this place and get back home without making a huge fuss, that would be ideal. 

“Oh! can I see? Is it that robot that answered first?”

“N...No, it’s actually what I’m here for.”

He took a calming breath. This was going to sound crazy. 

“I actually got here through a portal. I’m another you from a different dimension, and I need your help. Mind if I come back up to your room?”

There was lingering silence after that proclamation.

Finally, a quiet voice.

“Another….me? …..Portal?”

“Right. I just lost my way, and I need to get back home.”

He could see a figure moving around in the bedroom, then a pale face in the window, looking down at the street.

“Other window, Hiro, toward the garage.”

It felt freaking weird to address himself. Maybe just pretend it was someone else with the same name?

They made eye contact, and Hiro pulled the red helmet off, ruffling his hand through his hair and looked back up. He couldn’t tell the expression through the window, his eyesight not quite that good.

Hiro waved at the window, and other-Hiro gave a little wave back. He put the helmet back on.

“Would it be okay to come back up? I’m done with all the repairs I can do, just waiting on a battery to finish charging.”

There was a long pause, and a weak ‘yeah’

Hiro frowned. If the positions were reversed, he’d definitely be excited to meet an alternate version of himself. Maybe the guy just needed some time to adjust to the idea. It had been dumped on him rather abruptly.

“Alright, leave that window unlocked.”

“Okay.”

The face backed away from the window, and Hiro jogged back to the garage, tossing his helmet back to Baymax after whistling for his attention. Armored hands caught the helmet, a good sign for the developing environmental reaction AI.

“Put your feet back on, when you’re done charging. I’ll be back in a bit.

He hurried back into the alley, pulling his hood up and starting the short climb. Someone had installed a power line styled ladder up the side of the house, one that Hiro had been terrified to use, until a night of being grounded and reeeaaally wanting to get to a bot-fight.

Nothing like a dash of frustration to motivate a guy to try something new.

Granted, he’d still been terrified, but he didn’t die, and that was enough to encourage its repeated use.

Judging from the dried mud clinging to the bars, this world’s Hiro had also utilized that route.

Making a face, Hiro resolved to call this world’s version of himself ‘Other-Hiro… or….O’Hiro.

Yeah, that sounded good.

He tapped gently on the window, pulling at the frame when it wasn’t pushed open for him. Hiro awkwardly climbed back into his (not his) room, flopping into a roll when his ankle caught on the edge.

He looked up from the floor, raising his hands in a spread-fingered gesture.

“Ta-daaaaa.”

O’Hiro gave him an unsettled look, which he tried to ignore. Longer hair, and a thin scar above his eyebrow? Well, at least they were recognizable from each other. He didn't really blame the guy for being weirded out. It was super strange having a twin suddenly. 

Hiro shuffle-crawled to the closet, pulling his gloves on.

“What are you doing?”

He grinned cheerfully, trying to ignore the wary look sent his way.

“Gloves on. There are sensors inside that let me control what’s shown on the inside of the helmet. Here, lemme see it.”

He held out his hand, and O’Hiro gingerly placed it in his palm. Hiro ducked his head into it, adjusting slightly and blinking the display on with a flick of his wrist. Brown eyes widened appreciatively.

“Pretty cool, huh.” He felt the suave, self-congratulating voice slip in. “I, uh… made it myself.”

Still, he started a search for information on portals, letting an internet search engine do the work for him. He intended this function to be for quick, on-the-job research, but apparently random browsing worked just fine.

He had a thought, pausing to consider it.

Wouldn’t it be easy to just put on his helmet and browse the internet without even getting out of bed? He’d just have to calibrate the gloves to register certain buttons and mouse movements, and synchronize them as wrist and finger movements. That wasn’t very hard at all - heck, it was practically pre-made.

Hiro didn’t know whether to be appreciative at the thought, or mad he didn’t think of it earlier.

“You said… you were lost?”

Hiro shot him a quirked grin, gesturing the search window to minimize.

“I was trying to save someone else, who had been trapped inside a collapsing portal.” At the odd look he was given, he turned back to the search.

“It’s a long story. Anyway, I’ve got some people who want me back home.”

“It’s still strange to see my face on someone else…..You sure you’re not here to kill me and take my place as the more powerful clone?”

Hiro laughed, shaking his head and deliberately not mentioning that he had considered doing that exact thing only hours ago.

“Hey, do you know of any portals that might be around? If they even exist, here.”

“Funny you should mention that.”

Hiro looked up at the longer haired boy, watching him roll a strand of hair between his fingertips and stare determinedly at the wall.

“Just last week, it was on the news. Some sort of ‘Convergence’ happened, and a huge portal opened up in London.”

Hiro lit up, bouncing to his feet.

“What! Really?! That’s awesome!”

“Mmmhm. And and year before THAT, New York had a bunch of aliens drop in.”

“Aliens are real?”

He raised his hand to scratch the back of his head in embarrassment at the look shot his way, but his gloves only tapped the back of his helmet.

“I suppose alternate selves from another dimension is less weird than an alien invasion - was it an invasion?”

“There were giant armored space whales smashing buildings, and laser fights. Pretty sure it was an invasion.”

Hiro flopped back onto the floor, looking up at the ceiling. His alternate continued to bounce his leg, tugging on that strand. Since he knew where to look, now, the searches were much easier. Quite a few sites had posted pictures of the invasion of New York, and the ‘Collision’ or ‘Combining’ or whatever it was called, from London. New York would probably be his best bet, for finding more information. The portal there was blue, and not a golden-red.

He didn’t understand the technology at all, but obvious color differences should be significant.

Right?

He'd go with that. 

He considered asking for Tadashi’s help, or the rest of his team from this dimension, but a quick search pinged back a blatant lack of advanced technology institutions. Likewise, a few searches for technology that he considered old news seemed to still be in development here. Even 3-D Printers were in their beginning stages!

The likelihood that any of them knowing advanced portal technology was extremely low.

A rumbling engine cut off outside, and Hiro pushed himself upright again.

“Thanks for letting me know.”

He started strapping on the knee guards, taking his helmet on to wiggle back into the chest armor. His ears pricked, detecting the familiar sound of someone ascending the stairs. That third stair creaked rather loudly, the same in either dimension.

He hurriedly finished dressing, tucking his helmet under his arm and heading toward the window.

“Seriously, thanks for all your help, other-me, but I should get going before Aunt Cass sees two of us. Baymax, it’s time to leave. C’mere.”

He spoke into the helmet, wanting to wait until he got out the window before putting it on.

The steps were getting louder, accompanied by a sudden flurry from behind him. He turned, wondering what was going on, when he was tackled to the ground.

“Ah! Hey! What’re you doing!”

One arm was wrenched behind his back, and he hissed in protest. A man and a woman had arrived on the top of the stairs, guns drawn, definitely not Aunt Cass.

Hiro struggled, wiggling and trying to get the kid off him. Fear and helplessness rose up like a smothering wave. His alternative was easily overpowering him, probably taking advantage of the weakness lingering from his months of depressed isolation.

What was going on! Why was he doing this?!

“Baymax, Help!”

One of the suit-clad people spoke into a radio, but Hiro was too busy trying not to eat carpet to really see who did it or what was said. 

The familiar whine of thrusters lifted his heart, and the strangers were clearly more wary of the giant red-clad robot ripping open the bay windows than they were of the scrawny boy on the ground.

Other-Hiro’s distraction was enough that he could get a knee under him, launching himself upright and wincing at the crack of a face against the back of his skull.

A cry of pain, and Hiro was free, stumbling toward the window and shoving his helmet back on. He jumped out the window, clinging to his bot’s shoulder and urging him to get up into the sky.

A series of gunshots rang out, and Hiro flinched, but didn’t feel any pain.  

Wind whistled around them, one red arm caging him in against Baymax’s chest as he clung desperately to the familiar shapes. The city fell away beneath them, a maze of roads and lights. 

They leveled out just below the cloud cover, slowing enough that Hiro felt comfortable climbing up to his proper mounted position between the red wings.

His hands were shaking.

Throughout the slim wings, Hiro could see a peppering of holes. Little shavings of metal and fibers gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. Their armor was clearly not made for stopping bullets.

He ducked down, pressing his forehead against Baymax’s back.

  
What had just happened?

"What am I going to do?"


	6. Oh, what a world.

“I’m another you, from another dimension”

It didn’t compute at first, the words that no one expected to honestly hear. Another him? That couldn’t be right - it had to be a prank.

“Mind if I come back up to your room?”

It felt like his breath had been knocked out. _Back into his room_? As in, he’d already been in here? He looked at the pieces of armor tucked away in his closet, the purple seeming more sinister now.

‘Not going to nag me about staying out late again?’

‘Figure you had enough of that for one morning.’

The other-him, the imposter, had been in his room. He’d talked to Tadashi, and his brother hadn’t noticed the difference.

shit.

_Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit._

He gave a distracted affirmative to the person’s (was it even human?) request, tapping a quick search into his computer. He’d heard an announcement on the news, alongside the footage of New York being torn apart. It was later repeated after the London incident, phone numbers to call if they noticed alien activity or technology.

It might be nothing, but someone claiming to be himself from an alternate universe sounded a lot like alien technology to him - or a sweet lie meant to lure him into a sense of security before taking him out and taking his place.

Something occurred to him.

His bed was still unmade. That in itself was unusual - both Aunt Cass and Tadashi were inenviable neat freaks. They always made his bed in the morning, unless he was still sleeping in it when they woke up.

His skin crawled at the thought.

That person had slept in his bed while he had been away. .

All the little pieces slipped together into an unsettling conclusion: His doppelganger was trying to take his place.

And now, he’d already agreed to let him into his room, where they’d be alone. Aunt Cass was working the cafe - probably too loud and too busy down there to come to his rescue if anything went wrong.

His heart picked up, fluttering like a caged bird against his ribs.

What was he supposed to do?

 

Hiro snatched up his cell phone, punching the numbers on his monitor into it. As it rang, he closed the window and shut off his monitor for good measure.

“Hello? Someone made a clone of me and they’re trying to kill me and take my place, this is an emergency. No, I’m not joking. I saw him, talked to him, and now he’s trying to get into my room. I- yes, he’s got weird armor and- okay, yeah. My address is…”

As he spoke, Hiro sat down on his bed, heart racing as he heard the footsteps and rattling of someone climbing the pole ladder on the side of the house. He turned his phone off abruptly, cutting off the lady’s questions about the situation. There’s no way he’d be caught reporting this - no need to egg the alien on.

 

Having someone who you’ve concluded wants to kill you just casually lounging about your room can be an unnerving experience on even the best days. Trying to pretend that you didn’t know was doubly stressful.

The upside? He knew his own face, and knew his own expressions. If this thing even had proper human emotions (was he a robot, like the Terminator? He already admitted to having a robot in the garage. Was it backup in case the original plot failed?”

“You sure you’re not here to kill me, and take my place as the more powerful clone?”

He caught a flash of a grimace, before a forced laugh covered it up, words brushing it off and denying.  

That was a ‘yes’.

He warily gave information about the portals from earlier this year, ready to bolt at any minute. The lady had said people were on their way, but never mentioned how long that would take. Still, as the doppelganger started putting on the armor, he only felt his anxiety rising.

When those words called ‘Baymax’ over, and the threat of another robot was confirmed, he all but had a heart attack. Any number of weapons could be hidden inside armor like that - he’d seen Iron Man on youtube, and the crazy amounts of missiles and destruction that armor could dish out.

When his alternate tried to escape through the window, Hiro wasn’t exactly sure why he tried to tackle him to the ground. It was stupid, and put himself in danger, but he didn’t want this thing to be able to come back another time and try again.

He got a broken nose for his trouble, but the fierceness in the agents’ eyes made him feel a bit better. They really did have his back. They knew he wasn’t lying.

They called for backup, describing the two armors with efficient words.

“Do you know anything that could help track them?”

One of the agents grabbed a tissue box, offering it to help stem the flow of blood.

“The purble one looks exactly like me, under the armber. I think he’s a clone or subthig -  interested in New York”

He wasn’t alone in this.

 

* * *

 

 

Baymax had transmitted, upon request, an active feed of his battery levels and what was draining it fastest. Hiro quickly directed him back down to the earth, mourning the loss of the cobbled-together charger that still lay in Other-Hiro’s garage.

They needed to conserve energy.

Flight drained more than anything, a thirty minute flight would drain his batteries even after a full charge. With that in mind, he thanked every spirit he knew of that the battle with Krei had been fast-paced. With time and resources, he’d probably be able to double or triple the battery life - new technology was being developed every day, after all.

In this universe, with no one to fall back on?

Baymax landed in a mostly-empty parking lot behind a building, watching as Hiro jumped off and started pacing, thinking.

“What kind of public transport could get us to New York?”

Wifi was easy enough to tap into, a world of information at his fingertips.

 

* * *

 

 

Passengers of 784 Surfliner were generally a bit confused, but mostly accepting of the brightly armored duo.

After all, California was host to one of the largest comic conventions in the world, and only a few months had passed since that reminder to the general public. People from all over the world would fly in to attend. Seeing kids and adults wearing strange outfits on public transports was no longer very strange.

The assumed ‘of course someone must be inside the armor - it’s just a costume’ and Baymax’s generally fluid movements only reassured them that nothing was amiss.

Of course there were questions, but a recurring theme in the soft translations filtering into his helmet let him set a predetermined response. The outfits were from a video game their friend had made, and there was a convention in the next city over. Easy enough, and vague enough that people in a hurry would not question further.

They were shuffled into their seats, height and width Baymax’s armor making it a rather tight squeeze and spawning several displeased mutters on the way. Still, they managed to get on, and Hiro presented stolen identification and tickets to the attendant when requested.

“Baymax, let him know in English, that you don’t have pockets, that I’m your brother, and that we’re traveling to a convention in Nevada.”

The lie slid off his tongue with ease, countless hours of integrating into bot fights and rubbing shoulders with the shadier side of San Fransokyo finally paying back.

Baymax obediently repeated the words, Hiro’s ears parsing apart the words to find identifiable meaning behind the structure.

The attendant accepted his bluff, handing back the ticket stubs with a small smile.

“I hope you and your brother enjoy your ride.”

Hiro nodded, assuming everything was fine as the attendant walked out without a fuss, stress falling out from his shoulders as the door rattled shut.

Pickpocketing wasn’t really a skill he liked to count on - Hustling bets was so much more profitable and less likely to land him in jail, after all. He turned the drivers license over in his hands, making a careful note of the address.

Kiko Honda was the only guy he could find in the station, on such short notice, who looked both young enough and tall enough for Baymax to pass as both the man and Hiro’s brother. Hiro could only hope the guy just assumed his things fell out of his pocket, and didn’t raise an alarm or something.

He looked back to the tickets.

That was a terrible thing to rely on.

Five hours until they had to switch trains. By then, they’d be in a place called ‘Nevada’, far beyond the borders that he had ever traveled in his own universe.

Until then, he’d better get to memorizing the birthday and address on this thing. It wouldn’t do to be caught with a fake ID and unable to rattle off information any person should know about themselves. Baymax had memorized the entire thing with a quick scan.

Useful, that.

He snuck a glance at Baymax, guilt roiling around in his gut. Tadashi would kill him if he knew what Hiro had done. The fact that Baymax had watched, and said nothing, sat wrong with him. Logically, he knew the Bot had only a rudimentary database of morals and ethics, but that didn’t stop the guilt.

“I’ll mail it back, once we get to New York.”

Dark eyes turned to him, head tilted attentively.

“I’m just borrowing it for a while, not really stealing.”

Baymax murmured something about his stress levels being unhealthily high, and advised him to share what was causing distress. Good for mental health, or something like that.

Hiro tucked the ID into his pocket, swallowing and curling up against the bot’s sturdy armor. It wasn’t a forgiveness born of understanding, but the lack of blame lifted something from his shoulders.

Five hours.

“Wake me up in three hours, or if someone tries to talk to you.”

“I am setting an alarm now.”

Hiro scrubbed at his face, cluttered mind struggling to really lay out a plan. There were too many variables, too many problems in finding the portals and forcing it to return him home. He didn't want to entertain the thought of being stuck here forever, but he didn't know if such a thing was even possible.

The betrayal of other-him was...weirdly unsettling. Like looking in a mirror and having it do something completely unexpected, like wave back at him. He thought he could predict his own actions.

It had become increasingly clear over their interactions that the two of them were different people, regardless of genetics and appearances. With a bitter taste in his mouth, he concluded Tadashi was probably a different person as well. They had different lives, and different ways of looking at the world.

If he couldn't trust himself, or the alternate version of his family, who could he?

Hiro took off his helmet, ruffling the slightly sweaty hair back into unruly spikes.

“Thanks, Baymax.”

It was easier than he would have suspected, to fall asleep on a train.

The faint whirring of familiar machinery probably helped. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Headcanon :
> 
> Hiro is not an inventor, he is an innovator. He takes current inventions and fits them to his purposes. He can quickly understand how things are put together, and how they could be changed - like miniaturizing Gogo’s magnetic wheels, making the lasers into hand-blades, even his own battling robot was repurposing of magnetic servos that someone else had invented.  
> Microbots are miniaturized magnetic servos, Baymax’s flight capability was seen earlier in the film, from a student making their cat hover in little jet boots. 
> 
> The only thing he actually invented was the headband to control the microbots. Rewatching the scene, he barely gives it a passing glance. “I control them with this neurotransmitter.” suggesting it wasn’t even a big deal, just a different type of remote. No explanation. Can we really say they didn’t already have neurotransmitters that just hadn’t been put to that kind of use?
> 
> Even programming Baymax with new fighting moves or designing armor was heavily aided by the tech he had at his disposal. 
> 
> Hiro is not an inventor. He is an innovator, but there is absolutely nothing wrong or ‘lesser’ about that. Innovators are the people who take inventions - like super-precision lasers or frictionless wheels, and put them to use beyond just being a neat thing that exists.  
> He has a quick mind, a huge pool of knowledge about electronics, and an imagination to match.  
> If Big Hero 6 was Apple, Hiro would be Steve Jobs. While not necessarily an creator of new technology, he was a visionary, and had the drive and engineers and tools to make his dreams into reality.


	7. Welcome to the Black Parade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Friendly reminder that Baymax disconnected from the charger to help Hiro looong before the estimated 'two hours' to fully charge was up.

Never underestimate the power of social media.

 

A few curious neighbors had taken snapshots - one even snagged a short video of what had transpired that day, outside the Hamada residence.

Of course there was rampant speculation as to whether or not the big one was a real human - or if the video had been somehow faked.

In a certain tower, a man rolled over in his sleep as a twittering alarm rang from above.

Videos and pictures popped up in a holographic display, awaiting his awakening. An AI started preemptively sorting data and linking to sources as the news spread in growing ripples across the internet.

In California, a drivers license was reported missing.

A lot can happen in three hours.

 

* * *

 

 

Hiro awoke blearily; Not to Baymax’s alarm, but to the feeling of slowed inertia. He peered out the window, processing the sight of rolling hills of scrubland and towering mountains in the distance. Warm palms rubbed sleepy sand out of the corners of his eyes, listening idly to unfamiliar words from the loudspeakers.

He nudged Baymax with his elbow, fighting back a yawn that tightened the edges of his eyes.

“Hey buddy. Mind translating that for me?”

The bot turned its head upward, blinking at the speakers and quietly repeating what had been said.

“Attention Passengers. Due to a injury in one of our conductors, we’ll be stopped momentarily while a local ambulance comes. In the mean time, please enjoy some complimentary snacks and drinks.  Thank you for your understanding.”

Hiro sat upright, feeling more alert. He knew he shouldn’t bring attention to them, but if someone was seriously hurt, it was better to help, right?

“What happened?”

Baymax turned his head, a faint whine coming from his internal sensors as they broadened their reach.

“My sensors indicate no injuries that occurred on this train.”

Hiro’s brows furrowed.

“What about the drivers?”

Black eyes blinked behind the shield on his helmet.

“The Conductors are in perfect health. I see no cause for alarm.”

Uneasy tension crawled up Hiro’s spine. He looked out the window again, trying to spot the ‘approaching ambulance.’

Instead of the red-and-white vehicle that he expected, the only vehicles he could spot were black SUVs and the suited people climbing out of them. Just as Hiro realized what was going on (they had been tricked!) a balding man stepped into the compartment, pulling off sunglasses. 

He had a friendly sort of face, but that didn’t stop the boy from feeling a sinking dread when they made eye contact.

The man smiled, raising his empty hands in a gesture of peace.

The few other passengers of the train compartment looked nervous, but none so much as Hiro.

With an easy gait, the man strolled down the isle toward them, sliding into one of the seats across the lane.

He kept his hands in clear view, looking up to address Baymax.

“You’ve given my friends quite a scare, you know.”

Appearing to pick up on previous patterns of actions, Baymax helpfully translated the man’s words to Hiro, a small voice in his ear. The boy made sure to tuck his face behind his bot’s armor before replying quietly, counting on the helmet to muffle him enough.

Baymax dutifully repeated the words aloud, his voice monotone and soothing.

“I mean no harm - we’re just trying to get home.”

The man smiled again, the expression giving wrinkles to the corners of his eyes.

“Happy to hear that. We’d actually like to help you with that.”

“Help is good.”

Hiro shot a look at the back of Baymax’s helmet, hoping his friend didn’t start answering questions on his own. This was delicate!

"I'm Phil Coulson, by the way. It's nice to meet you and your friend." 

Hiro whispered his response. 

"Likewise. What do you want with us?"

"Well, we just want to know who you are, and what you want."

Baymax's voice answered, without prompting. 

"My name is Baymax. I am a personal healthcare companion."

Hiro slapped a gloved palm to his helmet, and the man raised an eyebrow.

“You’re… a personal nurse? Why all the armor?”

“While it does undermine my huggable appearance, Hiro says my armor makes me a better healthcare companion.”

Hiro slouched down, hissing into the microphone in his helmet. He’d been getting a translated version of the conversation, but Baymax wasn’t responding to intervention.

“shut up shut up stop talking oh my god baymax stop talking.”

The man leaned sideways, seeing brown eyes glaring fiercely at him through the helmet’s visor.

“And does Hiro think weapons would make a better healthcare companion?”

“No, but I do know karate.”

Baymax cheerfully moved his arms in a pantomime of a basic move. The man looked a little startled at that kind of childish answer, but by the calculating look in his eye, was rearranging information in his head.

He leaned back and stood up, a faint smile still on his face.

“Thanks for your cooperation, you two. If you wouldn’t mind accompanying me outside, my friends and I can help you find your way back home. Does that sound good to you?”

Baymax looked to Hiro, who nodded shortly and avoided meeting the man’s gaze.

This was a giant disaster. 

The three of them ambled toward the exit, while Hiro’s mind raced with possibilities.

The only way out would give them the tiniest window of opportunity. They just had to play their cards right.

 

* * *

 

 

The desert sun half-blinded Hiro as he stepped into the dry heat, even through his visor. He caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, and lunged sideways and upward to cling to Baymax’s back. Halfway through the movement he was already barking orders.

The robot obeyed instantly, diving to the side to avoid a sudden electric baton strike and snapped open his wings.

Hiro wasn’t terribly surprised at the familiar agent standing up from the shadows, knowing her face and light brown hair from their attempts to capture him before.

Without warning, Baymax twisted to the side, batting something out of the air and launching them both into the sky. Hiro got a glimpse of some sort of twisting cord falling to the ground before the world fell away beneath them.

Hiro had recognized the woman when she stepped out of the SUV, and figured the two from earlier came as part of the team. If those guys were here, then whatever agency this was couldn’t be trusted, no matter what that Coulson guy said. 

Clouds fluttered past the two of them, Baymax's power supply blinking in the corner of his vision. They just needed to get to New York. It was alright, he could make it. The calculations spun in his head, anxiety stubbornly pushed back as the numbers told him things he didn't want to hear. 

Unless they stopped to recharge, it wouldn't be enough. 

 

He heard a distant whine, approaching too fast to be anything but a missile or a small plane. 

Hiro twisted to look over his shoulder, and felt his heart practically stop at the sight. 

Red and gold armor was hurtling at him from behind, man-shaped and propulsed by jets similar to what powered Baymax. His immediate thought may not have been his brightest observation. 

"How the hell do they have an alternate Baymax, but no 3D Printers?"

 

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

There was no time to really think over that inane thought before the red and gold bot was nearly on top of them.

Hiro can feel his arms shaking like jelly, suffering too little sleep and too much adrenaline to enjoy propping himself atop of Baymax for such a long time.

Thankfully, it didn't attack them right off the bat, and Hiro almost collapsed with relief.

Something flashed blue on the inside of his visor.

Hiro blinked at the notification he hadn't seen in awhile, a twitch of his finger opening it up to check the notification. Sure enough, the other robot now easily flying beside them had sent a request over a local wifi hotspot. (how….? Oh, it probably generated one itself) Since his internet access was still set to auto-connect, whoever was controlling the bot had been able to 'tap on the glass', so to speak. He wondered how far they were able to control the machine, or if it had an AI.

He opened all his communication channels, not sure which one was being requested.

A hiss of noise, and shortwave radio opened up.

And… didn't do much to help.

It was definitely an AI, and the speech functions must have been  _incredibly_  messed up. Or just terrible. But who on earth would make an AI that would go through all the trouble of communicating, just to spew a waterfall of nonsense words.

Unless Baymax was just translating poorly? But he'd been doing fine so far, and his battery wasn't THAT low.

"No thanks" Hiro answered, trying to be polite despite how on-edge he was. Baymax politely passed on the message in English...And then sharply veered sideways to avoid a sudden hookshot zipping through the air at them.

Hiro yelped, almost losing his grip, sucking in a breath as he realized the other bot had finally attacked.

Of course it had.

Hiro's annoyance turned into cold, sharp fear when he heard the loud retort of a small machine gun going off behind them, and saw new holes open up in a neat line along Baymax's left wing. His nursebot had banked sharply, but the red and gold behind them was easily keeping up.

Heart feeling like it was going to explode out of his chest, Hiro leaned hard into the turns, using his own momentum to change the center of Baymax's balance and allow him sharper turns, faster twists than he would have on his own.

A small missile shot past Hiro's ear, and he could actually feel the wind off the propulsion, buffeting his helmet, before sound was drowned out and Baymax barely dodged the explosion that opened up flames in front of them.

Hiro's fingers _ached_ from hanging on so tightly, and he wishes he had installed proper guns into Baymax's armor. He had designed the Rocket Fist to be able to catch up when they were standing, or flying around in the same general area. It wasn't designed to keep up with a high-speed aerial battle.

"It is too dangerous to continue our current evasive action." Baymax reported softly.

"No kidding!" Hiro gritted out, throwing his body to the side and yanking Baymax along as a loud buzzing noise heralded a  _visible_  red laser. Hiro ducked down, but felt his wind resistance suddenly change.  
He glanced over his shoulder, watching with cold dread as one of his helmet's fins helicoptered toward the ground, falling far behind them.

The bot was barrelling toward them, hands starting to brighten with a dangerous blue glow in each palm.

They were so screwed.

Hiro's world suddenly went spinning, the earth and sky abruptly changing places at a rapid pace, hands grabbing at nothing. He saw a glimpse of Baymax's silluette grappling in mid-air with the other robot, and the beginning of a blue flash before his body turned around again.

He was freefalling.

Hiro spread out his arms, baring his teeth behind his helmet. The ground was approaching fast, and he had no parachute, no real padding between himself and being a mangled pile of gore on the ground.

_Oh god he'd never see his aunt again, or his friends._

Hiro wanted to close his eyes, but couldn't bear to have his last moments end in uncertainty. The world was spread out around him, with nothing between him and the ground but air.

He held his breath.

5…..

4….

His muscles tensed anxiously, bracing for the inevitable.

3….

He saw a tent. Some poor camper was going to have a rough day.

2…

He cried out in pain as his neck snapped forward, muscles strained by the sudden whiplash.

His body continued its descent at a slower pace, and Baymax's wings barely cleared a nearby tree before the two of them skidded roughly to a stop in a sandy hollow.

Hiro ripped off his helmet, curling over on his side and digging a thick glove into the sand, just sucking in sharp, desperate breaths. His other hand pressed over his chest armor, dizzy from adrenaline and the sudden worldview change from "death approaches" to "jk you're fine"

He strangled a sob, clenching his eyes shut before shuffling through the sand to collapse against Baymax's side, feeling like he was about to shake apart. He couldn't get his hands to stop trembling.

"Are you okay, buddy?"

He sounded distant in his own ears, weak and frail like some injured bird.

"I have sustained significant damage to my exterior in the altercation, but I am functioning."

Hiro gave a slightly hysterical laugh, pawing at the latch uselessly for a moment to open the chest armor. Screw the robot that was probably going to descend upon them at any second, he needed to perform diagnostics. If nothing else, it would help center him.

Without even asking the bot, he found the problem when he lifted the chest armor, a beam of light shining through carbon fiber where it shouldn't.

Hiro stared at the tiny bullet hole, brushing his gloved fingertips over at it. He wondered when Baymax had received it. Before or after he had fallen off?

He looked down and found the little rip where it had punctured through. There was a good chance there would be an echoing hole through his back somewhere.

"Was any of your internal parts hit?"

" diagnostics show only my huggable outer shell has been compromised."

Sure enough, Hiro could hear the high-pitched hiss of air escaping.

Alright. It was okay. He had dealt with this problem before. He just needed…..

He just needed….

He was in the middle of a desert.

Hiro's head pillowed into the slowly deflating vinyl cover as he bore through another silent round of shaking. He wasn't crying.

He  _wasnt._

After he was done, Hiro wiped his eyes and took a deep breath, replacing the chest armor and wobbling to his feet.

"C'mon, Baymax. How's your power." Even as he asked, Hiro was putting his helmet back on, looking over the diagnostics flickering through his screen, assessing what resources he had left. He ignored the crow (raven?) cawing angrily at him from a nearby tree, walking back to help Baymax to his feet and walk around to get back on his back.

The armor shifted warningly, and he could hear the internal fans working harder to keep the vinyl inflated, to support the inner frame of the armor. Hiro swallowed tightly. They just needed to get to a nearby town, and he could scrounge for supplies and keep trying to get back home.

Baymax's thrusters sputtered to life, and the battery warning in his helmet flashed red.

They'd get there.

 

They were survivors.


	9. Chapter 9

He kept them low to the ground, dodging between rust-colored boulders and tall cactus reaching their needle-wrapped paws up toward the sky. He could feel the heat of the sun even through his armor, sweat slowly soaking into his clothes. He expected a red and gold bot to come barrelling down at them at any moment, but whatever Baymax had done while he was falling seemed to have dissuaded it for now. 

His mind seemed to hum in desperation as Baymax guided them safely through the tight swoops, discarding plans as soon as he could make them. This wasn’t his world, and he wanted to go back. Wanted to see his friends again. The robot’s soothing voice filtered into his helmet, telling him about the bruise forming on his shoulders, and the strain put on his neck from whiplash. The deep, aching bruise on his shoulder, still healing from his fight with Callaghan. Nothing serious.

A small part of him whispered that he wouldn’t be in this situation if he’d just left Abigail behind - if he hadn’t thrown himself into a collapsing portal to save someone he couldn’t even know was still there - or still alive. 

Or… 

What if she’d gotten through to the other side? If she was in this world, too?

Hiro licked dry lips, realizing he’d never recognize her, even if he did stumble across her. She’d been gone for years. He saw a video of her, once. There was no way. 

Ahead, a small town blipped into existence on Baymax’s scanners, 

The bot’s sweep caught a dozen wifi signals, and it was easy for Baymax to find one with a weak enough password to crack with automatic attempts. Hiro quietly asked him to search for more information on that bot that had attacked them, and on…. That eagle symbol some of the people had been wearing. 

Hiro would have asked for more, but Baymax was slowing his flight without prompting, and he realized the bright armor below him was trembling alarmingly. The battery was lower than he’d anticipated, sucked away by the flight and his internal fans trying to keep an inflated exterior firm enough to support the shell. 

He was an idiot, they should have walked. 

Already feeling miserable berating himself, Hiro hopped off onto stone and scraggly yellow grass, turning his options over in his head. Those people in the vans would probably try to find him again. He wasn’t entirely sure how they had initially tracked him, but it seemed like a good idea to lay low for now. 

Still, that decision meant-

Hiro exhaled slowly, trying to stay calm as he pulled off his helmet, fingers trembling slightly as they unlatched the rest of his armor. The carbon-fiber composite bounced a little as it fell upon the stone, and a dry breeze felt fantastic on the sweat-soaked spot on his lower back. 

“Alright, buddy. Armoring down.” 

Baymax obeyed without questioning, the two of them carefully pulling red and purple pieces away from the white body. Curious black eyes stared back at him from the round face, head tilted slightly in question. 

He didn’t think he’d ever get over how much emotional nuance Tadashi had programmed into the bot’s AI. 

Hiro gave him a wane smile, reaching up to accept the helmet as it was handed to him. He moved everything to a rocky outcropping, wedging the bright armor out of sight. 

“I want to preserve your battery life as much as possible.” He explained, crouching down to gather up some sand, tossing it over the glossy plates to dull it a bit - maybe hide it from distant prying eyes. “So, I’m going to run into town and try to find a...backpack, or a suitcase or something. To carry you in. Not the best of plans-” Hiro forced a laugh, ruffling the back of his hair as he turned around to face his companion. “But it’s really all I’ve got.”

Baymax tilted his head the other way, blinking as he processing the words. 

“If I go into hibernation, I will not be able to protect you.” 

“I know. I just… we’ve gotta get back home. To our real home. I need you for that, but I don’t have the supplies to keep you charged right now.”

“If you require assistance, please say ‘ouch’” 

His smile became a little more real. 

“Yeah, I will.”  He took a breath, steeling himself. “I am satisfied with my care.” 

Baymax waddled to the armor, carbon skeleton compressing, elbows tucked in, fans reversing the suck the vinyl exterior close. He condensed down to a cube just shorter than Hiro’s knees, the closed eyes and a familiar beep-hum letting him know the bot had put himself into hibernation. 

“Alright, buddy.” He brushed off his hands, not wanting to risk getting sand into his actuators. 

“I’ll be right back.” 

 

Hiro took a small step backward, before getting the nerve to tear his eyes away from the huddled down form and focus instead on the town in front of him. 

“Alright.’ he repeated to himself, the first few steps away almost agonizingly difficult. It became easier, the further he got, goal solidified in his mind. Backpack or Suitcase. Something to carry Baymax. Sturdy.. 

The slope wasn’t terrible, and he found plenty of footholds in the rocks and sand as he descended toward the town. It was already obvious he’d be getting a wicked sunburn on the back of his neck. 

 

\---

 

If pressed, Hiro would readily admit he hadn’t traveled outside San Fransokyo very much. Maybe a field trip or two, but the sprawling city had so much to offer, and his Aunt was so busy with the cafe, they’d never felt the urge. 

So if he were honest, he wasn’t sure if this level of technology outside a major hub was normal, or if it was due to the alternate world thing. They were in a  _ desert _ and there wasn’t a solar panel in sight. Criminal. 

No, really. They’d made solar and wind power a legal necessity decades ago - Wind koi and transparent solar arrays replacing windows had become commonplace. To have an empty sky above him, it still seemed… 

Hiro adjusted his sweatshirt, ducking into what looked like a military overstock store, offering the man at the desk an innocent smile as air conditioning washed over him in a delicious snap of cold. He scoped the place out, examining windows and exits as he browsed the shelves, absently flipping a price tag in his palm. His brain stalled for a moment, before he recognized the symbol as a dollar sign, though he couldn’t even begin to try converting it to yen. 

The man at the counter stayed in his place, and the floor layout had too much open space by the front door to even think of smuggling something out of sight. He sighed, waving to the man again as he stepped back out into the midday heat. 

 

Another store, another disappointment. 

 

He slunk into a tiny pawn shop, desperate enough to get a bag that he was willing to actually obtain money in a somewhat legal fashion. Hiro swept his eyes over the offerings, heart already sinking. The likelihood he’d find anything worth repairing was starting to look unlikely. Still, he trudged through the shelves, prodding at cracked electronics and TV’s that looked older than he was. When did they stop making them with actual cathode ray tubes? 

“Look, you don’t need an ipod, just something that can hold MP3s. I’d take one of those shitty samsung things, a flash drive, a  _ Floppy disk! _ Well, actually, no, not floppys, I don’t think my computer can even read those.”

Hiro glanced toward the woman at the counter, and the… whatever that was, in her hand. It looked a bit like a phone. He put down the dusty keyboard he’d been examining, drifting a bit closer. He couldn’t understand a word of what she was saying, but he could read the irritation in her voice, and the way she gestured to its black screen. 

“Look, darling-” The pawn shop’s owner rasped through a cigarette-ravaged throat, wrinkles casting her expression into a much fiercer scowl than she probably intended. “I know you want your music, but I just don’t have anything in right now. There’s a Best Buy in Phoenix-”

The woman groaned, rocking back on her heels and looking up at the ceiling. 

“I can’t drive all the way to  _ Phoenix _ , I’ve got  _ stuff _ to do!” 

“Um-” The two jumped a little at his voice, turning in sync to stare at him in surprise. Hiro let himself shrink back behind the display of sun-bleached rotary phones and boxy computer screens, playing up his appearance a bit. 

“ _ Do you speak japanese?”  _

The old woman squinted at him, but the younger one lit up. 

“ _ Hello!”  _ She chirped. “ _ lost?”  _

“ _ N-no, not lost. Sorry for evesdropping, but what’s wrong with it? _ ” 

The woman gave him another long, blank stare, cheerful smile fading into something a bit more strained. 

“ _ Sorry. Do you speak english? I don’t understand.”  _  Hiro licked his dry lips, realization dawning that her accent wasn’t just an accent - she probably didn’t know much of the language. 

“ _ Your…”  _ he made a gesture with his hand to mimic the grip she had on her little device. She looked down at it, and waved it.

“Ipod.”

“ _ Ipod _ .” Hiro echoed the word, voice cut off as she suddenly started talking to him instead of the shopkeep. He peeked out a bit further, mentally rolling his eyes at the shy persona, but knowing women tended to soften up faster when someone his age seemed more childish. 

“It won’t charge. It went through shady government confiscation, and  _ two years _ on the road, and now it won’t freaking charge for no freaking reason. I have like, six hundred hours on there. I haven’t even backed it up in months.” 

He held his hand out, amused at the exasperated, wary look she gave him as she pulled a knotted up charger from her back pocket.. 

“I swear to god if you run off with it, I’m going to be so pissed at you, and myself for trusting some random foreign kid. I will hunt you down. Where’s your parents, anyway?”  

Hiro took the device, and accepted the charger in his other hand, trying to ignore the sharp glare drilling into the top of his head. He plugged it in and, predictably, nothing happened. Well, almost nothing.

He leaned his ear in close, wiggling the cord to hear a faint click-click-click. Oh! Well, that was easy enough to fix, if it was what he thought it was. 

“ _ Do you have a… _ ” Crap, language barrier. He mimed a soldering gun, and jumped a little as a notebook and pen was shoved in his face. Well, that would work, too. He skipped trying to write, instead deciding to draw a little soldering gun with smoke around the tip, next to her device. 

The woman stared blankly at the paper for a moment longer, before straightning and turning so fast her dark hair whipped up and over her shoulder. 

“For the love of god please tell me you have a soldering gun.”

The old woman waved her hand toward a shelf behind Hiro, and he found it nestled between some sort of red, fuzzy monstrosity of a robot, and a gyroscope with one of the rings missing. 

It took some trial and error to get the screen off, but the gleam of circuitry and resistors called to him. The port on the top told him it was a music player of some sort - he could see her headphones tucked into her shirt collar. The port on the bottom had come loose - probably from the charger being jammed into it too rough for too long.

The old woman seemed content to ignore the two of them, leaning back to work on a crossword puzzle in an old newspaper. The younger one, however, hovered over him, watching his every move with her lips held between her teeth like she was afraid she’d blurt something out and mess him up. 

A tiny application of heat to the old solder, a careful press, and an even more careful maneuvering with dexterous fingers let him plug the screen back in, line it up, and gently pop the connectors back together. He blew into the charging port, just to make sure it was cool, before plugging the charger in. 

For a heart-stopping moment, he thought he’d misjudged the problem. 

Then, the screen lit up with an empty battery symbol, and the woman behind him wooped in delight. He yelped when she scooped him up into a hug, feet lifting off the floor for a moment. 

“Oh my god, thank you so much. You are a  _ LIFE  _ saver!” She unplugged everything, shoving it back into her pockets. “Friggin amazing, thank you. Here, I gotta thank you somehow - let me grab you something to eat. I hope you don’t think I’m kidnapping you, I swear I’m not a creep or anything. JAAAAAAAAANE!” 

Hiro let himself be pulled along, wondering if he’d be able to ask her for payment without sounding like a scam artist. He regarded the roadside trailer with no small amount of suspicion, but the yelled word prompted a brunette to poke her head out, clearly irritated. 

They exchanged some words, but Hiro was a bit distracted by the mess of technology perched over their heads. Was that a Spectrograph? He tilted his head, trying to get another angle. No, seriously, it looked like a spectrograph. Like someone had taken Baymax’s voice processing array and made it… huge and old-looking. Hiro held in his laugh, real interest buoying him up at the idea of talking to someone who actually  _ knew _ technology.

Except- No, he still needed to get back to Baymax before something happened.

“Oh my god you kidnapped someone.”

“I did not! He fixed my ipod in like, a second! I wanted to give him a snack as thanks, since he doesn’t understand English. Speaks Japanese, though. I really need to brush up on it-”

“You actually kidnapped a kid.”

“I just said-”

“Darcy, put him back.”

“Hello?” 

The two of them stopped their argument, and the woman let him tug his wrist out of her hand. She lifted a finger, and pushed into the the trailer. The older brunette grumbled, but stepped down out of the trailer, pulling out what looked like a phone. 

She turned the screen to face him, words appearing on both sides of a line - Oh! A translation! 

>I’m really sorry about this, we will allow you to get home. 

He cracked a small smile, and gently took the phone to type in his response. 

>It’s fine. I fixed her thing.

He paused after showing it to the woman, and continuing to type without giving her a chance to respond. 

>My bag broke, and I want  to afford a new one. Do you have an extra bag, or a job I could do? I can fix a lot of things.

She took the phone from him when offered, reading over the request and giving him a questioning look. 

>where are your parents?

He folded his arms, frowning. He could lie, but… No, she’d already read into his expression.

>How old are you?

Well, shoot. So much for this plan. 

He took a step back, planning to just run off and find another way around this - maybe he could find a place to gamble, but a hand fell on his shoulder. The woman typed furiously, as furiously as one could type while prodding a screen with one finger. 

>If you don’t have a place to stay, I have a couch open.

He gave her a considering look, calculating the odds that she’d just call whatever the equivalent of Child Safety Services was here, or the police. His logic told him that was a very high chance, but the exhaustion and  _ ache _ of his muscles told him to accept a good deal when it presented itself. 

>I’ll make dinner.

Welp, that solved it. 

He gestured for the phone back, and prodded out

>I’ll be back tonight. I’ve gotta get some stuff.

She let him scamper off, jogging into the brush to circle back toward the nook he left Baymax in. If anything, a lady who kept a Spectrometer on her roof probably had the tech to make another charging port - Maybe even some adhesive to close the punctures in his vinyl. Baymax could act as a translator again. 

 

Plus, he didn’t have to worry about snakes or scorpions crawling into his pants while he slept.

 

Yeah, a couch sounded awesome. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N:
> 
> I know, I know, I'm retconning what I wrote earlier in the story, but I've hammered out some details of where I want this story to go, so it needs to be set between Avengers and Thor: The Dark World. So Hiro would be heading to New York, only knowing about that portal, and Jane/Darcy wouldn't have been summoned to London yet. Still doing Astrophysicist stuff in the desert.


End file.
